I have an affinity for hideously orange bedrooms. They follow me everywhere, or perhaps I seek them out. Whatever the case may be, I seem to attract them. The last two places I have come to call home have both had bright orange walls. The last one, in New Paltz, had a bit of an autumnal feel. It was a pleasant pumpkin orange with brown trim. Currently, I am sitting in a room that should be dedicated to the Florida Gators. The orange is borderline neon with a splash of electric blue. I would like to meet the females who occupied these residencies before I took over, but that seems highly unlikely at this point.
I have finally begun to settle in. I have moved into an apartment and, as you know by my last post, I have a job. Now that I have set up a base of operations, I can begin to take over the world. Work is nice and my social life is nicer. I have taken up the art of Ultimate Frisbee as my modus operandi for exercise. It is lots of fun and quite exhausting. It might be the most tiring activity one can engage in (next to soccer, of course).
So I am expanding my borders and conquering new territory everyday, however, I am not forgetting about the home front. I'm doing a little bit everyday to make this home feel a little bit more like... well, home. Today I went out and bought a mattress pad and decided to carry it back to the new apartment by myself on the subway. It was very entertaining, both for me and every other person who must have been thinking to themselves "crazy white boy." I managed to take a few people out in the process. I got off at Guting station and began the 8 minute walk down Tong An St. toward the river (which I live literally a stone's throw from) and decided to make life just a little bit more difficult. Ginormous mattress pad in one hand, I stopped to grab some lunch to go in the other. I wobbled the rest of the way home, trying not to spill my soup and decided that was enough Martha Stewartness for one day. Tomorrow... I paint.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Humorous Begininnings
The names Grow... Dave Grow. I am 26 years old and I have a Masters Degree is Business. I have been teaching English in Taiwan for over a year. I was born in 1982, the year of the Rooster, and come from New York, where police officers still ride horses. I may or may not be a spy for the Taiwanese government. This is the persona I have taken on for work and the sake of my students... except I lied about 1982, it was really the year of the Dog.
My first official week of classes has come to a close and I have learned many a valuable lesson. Valuable lesson number one: Taiwanese humor is quite different from mine. Due to the fact that Chinese is a tonal language, there are a huge number of words that sound almost exactly alike. So, Chinese humor is largely based on puns, and my sense of humor is therefore rendered insignificant to a group of students with a limited knowledge of the English language. However, we are all learning from one another (language from me, puns from them) and eventually we will meet somewhere in the middle.
For instance, today's lesson was modal verbs and how to make a suggestion or give advice. After we get through most of the lesson, I become slightly disinterested in listening to students repeat the same suggestions about what to take on a camping trip over and over again. I ask students to think of good advice or life suggestions that they can make to one another, and I give an example I think of on the spot. "In America, people will often say to one another 'You shouldn't eat yellow snow.'" In retrospect, a little planning and a better suggestion would have made my life easier.
First, I had to remind my students, all of whom live in a tropical climate, what snow is. Next I had to explain that snow is usually white, and as many of them thought, it's not pollution that makes it yellow. Third, I had to explain that it's a bit of a joke, between kids. This is certainly not the wisdom of the sages. Like I said, though, we will find a middle ground. And if they don't laugh at my jokes, they will certainly laugh at my terrible drawings on the board.
My first official week of classes has come to a close and I have learned many a valuable lesson. Valuable lesson number one: Taiwanese humor is quite different from mine. Due to the fact that Chinese is a tonal language, there are a huge number of words that sound almost exactly alike. So, Chinese humor is largely based on puns, and my sense of humor is therefore rendered insignificant to a group of students with a limited knowledge of the English language. However, we are all learning from one another (language from me, puns from them) and eventually we will meet somewhere in the middle.
For instance, today's lesson was modal verbs and how to make a suggestion or give advice. After we get through most of the lesson, I become slightly disinterested in listening to students repeat the same suggestions about what to take on a camping trip over and over again. I ask students to think of good advice or life suggestions that they can make to one another, and I give an example I think of on the spot. "In America, people will often say to one another 'You shouldn't eat yellow snow.'" In retrospect, a little planning and a better suggestion would have made my life easier.
First, I had to remind my students, all of whom live in a tropical climate, what snow is. Next I had to explain that snow is usually white, and as many of them thought, it's not pollution that makes it yellow. Third, I had to explain that it's a bit of a joke, between kids. This is certainly not the wisdom of the sages. Like I said, though, we will find a middle ground. And if they don't laugh at my jokes, they will certainly laugh at my terrible drawings on the board.
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